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Six thirty. That's when last night's council meeting ended. Shortest meeting I can recall this term - 90 minutes. Almost a breeze.

Ninety per cent of the meeting was simply a continuation of Thursday's six-hour planning/zoning bylaw marathon. That means the main topic under discussion - letters of consideration, comment and concern about provisions in the new zoning bylaw - took roughly seven hours in total to hear and discuss. There was really only that one topic of discussion on the agenda, last night - no public planning meeting, no delegations, no correspondence, no motions.

Each letter was presented individually in a bound document, complete with the planning department's comments and suggested resolution. Thursday we barely got through half the letters in the inch-thick document. Last night we did the remaining half in an hour.

Maybe we weren't collectively in as cantankerous - or as voluble - a mood as we seem to have been, Thursday. Whatever the reason, last night we raced through the letters and were out of the chamber in record time. Maybe the tough issues were at the front of the binder. Very little controversy over the content last night (Thursday was far more interesting from that perspective).

Perhaps the only serious...

Quietly nestled inside last week's consent agenda was a letter that may prove a ticking time-bomb for Collingwood's election process. The letter, from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, informed - warned? - council about upcoming changes to Ontario's Municipal Elections Act.

Changes that could seriously affect the way we hold elections. One of the things that may be on the chopping block is our mail-in ballot. Is it our electoral ball-and-chain? I'll address that further below.

The letter listed several proposed amendments to the Act, suggesting they would "strengthen the integrity of local elections." They'll certain upset the apple cart, since they will come into effect in early 2010, before the next municipal election. These changes included:

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I was surprised there was any debate let alone opposition, over the request to provide free parking downtown during the reconstruction of the main street, last Monday. After all, as nice as the revitalization will be when it's finished, the construction is having a massive impact on downtown businesses. No one can drive through the centre block, nor park on it. For the first two weeks, the fencing separated east and west sides of the street, which further dampened sales.

Council should be doing everything it can to relieve the pain we caused. The vote, while not close, was 7-2, with Deputy Mayor Cooper and Councillor McNabb voting against.

People have been staying away from the downtown, unsure if businesses are open or where to park. I've personally spoken to at least a dozen customers in my store who admitted that, since construction began, they'd stopped going downtown. So where are they shopping? Elsewhere - the malls, big box stores, or even going to Wasaga Beach and Barrie. The downtown is hurting.

And of course there's the recession. Despite governmental claims that it's over, it can still be felt here. I haven't found a single Collingwood business person who says sales have recovered to previous years' levels.

There is a...

My, oh, my. Was I surprised when I read Councillor McNabb's vituperative column in today's Enterprise-Bulletin.

Titled, "Now is the time for mayor to roll up his sleeves," McNabb takes a double shot, one at his fellow councillors, the other at the mayor. The latter certainly takes the brunt of it.

What surprised me was not the criticism of the mayor, but criticism from someone who for the past three years has been described as "the mayor's man" - not merely an ardent supporter, but an apologist for and defender of the mayor at almost every turn.

These columns are a new feature cooked up by editor Ian Adams (aka Scoop) to give every member of council an opportunity to publicly and individually address issues, or simply outline his or her ideas and goals. I'm sure that annoys the mayor, because he sees himself as the sole voice of council and the town and has been very critical to date of my blog.

So far, council has responded with fairly mild content: none of the articles have been even vaguely controversial until now (well, I haven't had my turn yet, but I have this blog to vent my spleen, so I don't need the paper to do so). This changes the texture of the spot. It's now not merely a space for civilized...

It will be interesting to see how some members of Collingwood Council handle the inevitable requests for funding that arrive outside the town's budget process, next year. In the past, most councillors have stuck to the line that, if a request is made outside the budget process, no matter how worthy of consideration, it will be refused.*

Rules! they say; we have to stick to The Rules. We have to follow The Process!

But apparently it's okay with them that Simcoe County Council doesn't. Nor did it seem to concern several of my colleagues that $250,000 of your taxes for PR cosmetics was merely handed out, not tendered. The county ALREADY spends $1.1 million annually on a communications department, but the county's politicians deemed it necessary to go to an outside firm at added cost to the taxpayer for their election-year makeover.

Monday night we received a letter from Tiny Township council objecting to this expenditure. I asked to have the letter pulled and made a recommendation to endorse that resolution.

I wrote about the county's decision in a previous entry. Last month, when I posted that piece, I commented that, "...if we're going to spend taxpayers' money polishing someone's image after a...

It seemed such a simple thing. Cranberry Resort wanted to extend its liquor licence so guests at the Bear Estate could go outside with a drink. Not to roam everywhere; the space was limited to a small area adjacent to the back of the building. Seems logical enough: on a nice summer afternoon, why would people at, say, a wedding, want to be indoors when beautiful Collingwood beckons just outside?

It wasn't an expansion of the activity space - the site plan agreement demands all events have to take place indoors, with the doors shut. That constraint was written in response to neighbour complaints about noise. This would just be a place for guests to get some fresh air, maybe smoke if they wanted, mingle, and converse. The doors would still be closed.

It wasn't a space to serve alcohol, either. Just a place outdoors for guests to get away from the crowd and enjoy a drink in the open air. Maybe watch the sunset, or gaze across the bay to the elevators. The motion called for it to be available only from noon* until 8 p.m., too, so it wouldn't mean a large group of people outdoors, late at night.

And it wouldn't mean an increase in the number of guests, either. This is an ancillary use to the existing conditions, not an added use, so the fire...

Drive-through* businesses have been around in North America since the 1930s. According to Wikipedia, the concept began with a single bank in 1928, and extended to restaurants only in 1948.

They joined drive-in operations - restaurants and movies - as part of the popular car culture of the 1950s and the 1960s. One might even say it has been a car-worship culture, as many trends in planning and development catered to the car, rather than to people.

Although McDonald's didn't get their first drive-through until 1975, today, almost every fast food restaurant and chain coffee shop has one. For some of these businesses, the drive-through trade represents as much as 60% of their business. They are often touted as convenient, fast and efficient.

But are they good for the community? Should we restrict or even ban them from future developments? Those are questions council has to wrestle with in our new 'comprehensive zoning bylaw.'

First, let me note that no one is saying we will tell anyone with an existing drive-through that it has to be closed. Not only do we lack the legal authority to do so, that's not the subject of the debate. The debate is about future drive-through operations, not current ones.

Collingwood already has numerous...

Another six-hour council marathon last night. And even with that amount of time, by the end of the night we still had not covered everything on the agenda. We broke off in the early part of the comprehensive zoning bylaw "workshop," with many areas still remaining to discuss.

Started at 5 p.m., adjourned at 11. There had been people in the audience waiting all night for some of these items to come forward for discussion. Instead, they went home, likely frustrated at the time spent waiting for something that never even came up.

The structure of the meeting was awkward. After roughly four hours, we broke away from the public view to spend more than one hour behind closed doors with our lawyer, discussing several property-related and legal issues. During that time, the audience, the media and many members of staff simply had to wait. We returned to attempt to finish the remainder of the agenda.

Surely it would have been better to hold the in-camera session at the start, say begin early at 4 p.m. That way our lawyer can leave if he is no longer required - and we're not paying him $600-plus an hour to wait for his time to come. It would mean there is no break in the continuity of the remainder of the meeting.

It would also mean staff could...

Council has bought the former Cinema 4 building on Huron Street for $1.4 million. While that's a lot of money, consider that half of that comes from a provincial grant and the rest was drawn from town reserves, so it won't come from new taxes.

It's certainly a better use of your tax dollars than, say, wasting more than $400,000 on the mayor's fight against educational development charges, or the $250,000 the county will spend of your tax dollars (and which mayor supported in a closed-door meeting!) on a PR agent to make the county representatives (i.e. the mayor) look more electable next term.

The money for the purchase will come from the following sources:

• Investing In Ontario Funds $700,000 (a provincial grant)
  
• Reserves/Economic Development 355,000 (much better way to spend your tax money than, say on some pointless 'branding exercise')
  
• Tremont Proceeds 100,000 (money from the sale of the building)
  
• General Reserves – Administration 95,000
  
• General Reserves – Human Resources 75,000
  
• Cash-in-lieu of Parking Fees - 75,000

The property is actually worth more than we paid for it, and even if nothing happens with it, it will be worth more in a few years and can be resold at a profit. But...

A certain level of professional courtesy is required to keep things civil and fair at the council table. We should, in a perfect world, behave in a manner befitting of representatives of the public, defending our collective democracy, and not merely individuals or cliques spoiling for a fight, squabbling over territory and trying to make sure we gain the most advantage out of a meeting.

We should respect one another, even if we don't necessarily like one another. And we should respect the ideals of democracy and put them above personal agendas.

Should, not do.

Which is why I was deeply disappointed, Monday, when the mayor and his Stepford supporters refused to defer a motion put forward by the Deputy Mayor, even through she was ill, and could not be there to present and defend it.

Even though I quickly asked for a deferral, the mayor allowed the motion's opponents to speak at length against the motion, then vote against the deferral, and then vote against the motion.

In a political climate where civility, respect and courtesy reigned, the motion would have been deferred out of respect for the missing proponent. There would have been no procedural harm in waiting a week to hear it.

The motion as presented to council read:

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